Month: March 2022

Authored by Ken Silva via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

“I seek unanimous consent to enter into the record on this committee the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, which I am in possession of.”

This request from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) briefly brought the House Judiciary Committee to a standstill March 29, before chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) relented and allowed the laptop data to become congressional record—archiving the business deals, pornographic images, and illicit data said to be on the infamous hard drive.

Gaetz’s surprise move followed a heated exchange with Bryan Vorndran, the assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division. The Florida representative asked numerous questions about the Hunter Biden laptop, only to have Vorndran profess ignorance to each one.

“In December 2019, they turned over the laptop to the FBI. And now you’re telling me as FBI’s assistant director of cyber, you don’t know where this is after it was turned over to you three years ago?” Gaetz asked.

“Yes sir, that’s an accurate statement,” Vorndran responded.

Gaetz said he found Vorndran’s response shocking. The FBI official argued that investigations into the laptop are not his responsibility.

Gaetz then asked whether anyone within the FBI’s cyber division has assessed whether Hunter Biden’s laptop has created a security vulnerability for the country.

“We can do this back and forth for the next couple of minutes. I don’t have any information about the Hunter Biden laptop,” Vorndran said.

Gaetz pressed further: “But should you? You’re the assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division,”

Vorndran said that, according to FBI HR flowcharts, no he should not have any information. But he also declined to say who within the FBI would.

Gaetz asked if the FBI would brief Congress on the laptop. Vorndran said he’d relay the request, but was non-committal as to whether a briefing will happen.

“Is Congress worthy of such a briefing?” Gaetz asked, referring to Vorndran as the Chris Webber of the FBI—a reference to a basketball player who made a mistake that cost his team the NCAA championship.

“So you don’t have it, you don’t know who has it, you don’t know where it is. Earlier this hearing, you were talking about whether you were the Grant Hill or Christian Laetner of the FBI,” Gaetz said. “It sounds like you’re the Chris Webber, trying to call time outs when you don’t have any.”

Vorndran appeared to be short of temper by the end of the interchange.

“I’m not going to answer that question!” the FBI official said in response to Gaetz’s repeated requests for a briefing. “The invitation says, ‘oversight of the FBI’s cyber division.’”

Gaetz then silenced the chamber when he asked to enter the laptop’s contents into the congressional record. Only murmurs could be heard as chairman Nadler consulted with a staffer.

“We will object, pending further investigation,” Nadler said.

“What’s the basis for objection?” Gaetz asked.
“It’s a unanimous consent request, and I object,” Nadler responded. “It may very well be entered into the record after we look into it further.”

About 10 minutes later, after another representative questioned Vorndran, Gaetz again motioned to enter the laptop contents into the record.

“After consultation with majority staff, I seek unanimous consent to enter into this committee content from, files from, and copies from Hunter Biden’s laptop,” he said.

This time, no one objected. Gaetz was also allowed to enter the receipt Hunter Biden allegedly signed at the Mac store.

So much for all that ‘peace’ optimism. Russia’s defense ministry stole the jam out of the market’s euphoric donut earlier this morning with comments that indicated the war is only just beginning and comments from the peace-talks suggested no progress had been made whatsoever. That spoiled the party (even with a decent ADP jobs print) and more hawkish talk from Fed Speakers likely did not help as it seems like the gamma-squeezers finally ran out of ammo.

Small Caps led the charge lower followed by Nasdaq and the Dow was the least worst horse in the glue factory…

Notably Nasdaq and Small Caps both reversed close to their 100DMAs…

It appears the short-squeeze is over…

Source: Bloomberg

AAPL’s near-record (2003) streak of positive days (11 in a row and up 20%!) is over…

Bonds were bid across the board today with the short-end outperforming today (3Y -7bps, 30Y -4bps). On the week, only 2Y yields are higher…

Source: Bloomberg

The yield curve (2s10s) held just above inversion today…

Source: Bloomberg

2Y German bond yields closed with a positive yield for the first time since Aug 2014…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar continues to slide, back near the lows of the month…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin slipped lower today but is generally holding the jump from the weekend…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold extended yesterday’s rebound off $1900

And oil surged back up to erased yesterday’s “peace” premium plunge…

Finally, the market continues to price in at least 3 rate-cuts starting next year…

Source: Bloomberg

Clearly expecting that the 9 rate-hikes priced in this year will bring recession… and the normal volte face response from the pavlovian seat-fillers in The Eccles Building.

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Florida governor Ron DeSantis openly accused Disney of being obsessed with sexualising children Tuesday, questioning why the company is choosing “the hill to die on” as having “transgenderism injected into kindergarten classrooms.”

Appearing on Tucker Carlson’s show, DeSantis was reacting to Disney’s public rebuke of his “Parents Rights in Education” bill which prevents children as young as kindergarten age being taught about transgender and gay sex issues in schools.

“For a company like Disney to say this bill should have never passed, first of all they weren’t saying anything when this was going through the House,” DeSantis asserted.

He continued, “They only started doing this because the woke mob came after them.”

“Why is the hill to die on to have transgenderism injected into kindergarten classrooms or woke gender ideology injected into second grade classrooms?” the governor questioned.

Carlson charged that Disney has a “fixation on the sexuality of children” pointing to recent reports that four employees of the media giant were charged with human trafficking in Florida, with one having allegedly sent sexually explicit texts to an law enforcement agent posing as a teenage child.

Referring to Disney’s active presence in China, DeSantis quipped that “if we had done a bill that prohibited talking about the abuse of Uyghurs in China, Disney would have supported that legislation because they won’t say a word about that.”

“They’re fine lining their pockets from the CCP and all the atrocities that go on there, but it’s those kindergarteners in Florida that they really want to have transgenderism as part of their core curriculum in school,” DeSantis added.

The governor also noted that Disney seems perfectly fine with running cruises to the island of Dominica, where homosexuality is criminalized.

DeSantis also commented on the attempt to frame his legislation as anti-gay by labelling it the “don’t say gay bill”.

“It’s not even used in the bill, it’s a fake narrative, it’s a lie. They have to lie because if they admitted to what they were really for, sexualizing kindergarteners and first graders, they know that would not fly with the public,” he urged.

Watch:

Think DeSantis is exaggerating? Here is Karey Burke, President of Walt Disney’s general entertainment, promising in a company meeting that nearly half of all Disney characters would either be LGBTQ+ or racial minorities by the end of this year.

“I am here as a mother of two queer children – one transgender child and one pansexual child and also a leader. It got me thinking when I had conversations with my colleagues on open forums and I feel a responsibility to speak not just for myself but also for them,” she added during the meeting.

SCOOP: Disney corporate president Karey Burke says, “as the mother [of] one transgender child and one pansexual child,” she supports having “many, many, many LGBTQIA characters in our stories” and wants a minimum of 50 percent of characters to be LGBTQIA and racial minorities. pic.twitter.com/oFRUiuu9JG

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 29, 2022

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The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has fined both Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for lying about funding the Russian “dossier” which underpinned the collusion hoax that hijacked headlines throughout the Trump presidency, according to the Washington Examiner.

The Clinton-funded dossier was also used by the FBI to justify seeking a FISA surveillance (spy) warrant on the Trump campaign.

According to the FEC, Clinton and the DNC violated strict rules governing disclosure of expenditures on opposition research, when they paid opposition research firm Fusion GPS to contract with Steele and cook up propaganda against Trump.

A combined $1,024,407.97 was paid by the treasurers of the DNC and Clinton campaign to law firm Perkins Coie for Fusion GPS’s information, and the party and campaign hid the reason, claiming it was for legal services, not opposition research.

Instead, the DNC’s $849,407.97 and the Clinton campaign’s $175,000 covered Fusion GPS’s opposition research on the dossier, a basis for the so-called “Russia hoax” that dogged Trump’s first term. -Washington Examiner

The dossier, which was assembled by former (?) UK spook Christopher Steele and used now-indicted Russian national Igor Danchenko as its primary source, made wide ranging and salacious allegations against former President Donald Trump, most of which have been debunked.

Somehow we doubt the ‘election interference’ crowd is going to pipe up over Clinton’s meddling in the 2016 US election, using a dossier that undermined Trump’s presidency every step of the way.

According to the FEC memo to the Coolidge Reagan Foundation – which filed a complaint over three years ago, Clinton’s campaign and the DNC argued that they were simply paying for “legal advice and services,” since it was Perkins Coie that actually hired Fusion GPS. The agency, however, says that the law is clear and was violated.

The fines themselves are minuscule – with Clinton’s treasurer hit for $8,000 and the DNC’s treasurer for $105,000.

“This may well be the first time that Hillary Clinton — one of the most evidently corrupt politicians in American history — has actually been held legally accountable, and I’m proud to have forced the FEC to do their job for once. The Coolidge Reagan Foundation proved that with pluck and grit, Americans who stand with integrity can stand up to the Clinton machine and other corrupt political elites,” said Dan Backer, who brought the complaint on behalf of the foundation.

 

The yen’s recent nosedive has heightened fears of a vicious cycle as Japan’s worsening current-account balance threatens to spur more selling while the BOJ’s dovish scramble to prevent rates from blowing out means that even modest countertrend buying will promptly reverse.

While a soft yen has long been seen as a boon to Japan’s economy, not to mention the stock market, and was one of the key drivers behind the launch of Abenomics whose anchor pillar was printing ginormous amounts of yen (and monetizing just as massive amounts of JGBs to monetize Japan’s prodigious deficit), now that benefits have tilted toward certain exporters and the wealthy while individuals and small businesses feel the pain of higher commodity prices, Japan may need to rethink a fundamental assumption of its economic approach.

After touching 125.1 to the dollar on Monday – its weakest point since August 2015 and approaching that year’s nadir of 125.86 – the yen rebounded slightly in volatile trading Tuesday to about 123 to 124 in Tokyo. According to Nikkei Asia, an estimate of the yen’s theoretical value may have fallen beyond 120 to the greenback, pointing to deeper problems than short-term speculation.

The immediate cause of the yen’s weakness has been a split in monetary policy between Japan and the U.S., with the BOJ re-emphasizing its commitment to super-loose policy as 10Y JGB yields nearly tripped 0.25%, the upper boundary of its Yield Curve Control corridor. If rise above, the central bank’s credibility in the bond market would be crushed. As a result, the Bank of Japan on Monday and Tuesday offered to buy unlimited amounts of Japanese government bonds to tamp down interest rates at a time when U.S. Treasury yields have soared as the Federal Reserve tightens policy to rein in inflation, encouraging traders to sell yen for dollars. Whereas on previous occasions the mere threat of buying debt was sufficient, this time the central bank found willing sellers to the tune of roughly $4 billion, also a first. Then on Wednesday, it unexpectedly offered to buy bonds in an unscheduled market operation.

But the softening trend in yen began before that, rooted in the more fundamental issue of Japan’s changing trade position.

As Nikkei report, in January, Japan’s current-account deficit topped 1 trillion yen ($8 billion). Imports in value terms have been ballooning amid coronavirus-related supply constraints and a commodities rally fueled by the war in Ukraine. Japan’s terms of trade, or the ratio between its export and import prices, have deteriorated, and more of the country’s income has flowed overseas as import costs have swelled.

These factors affect the underlying value of the yen.

The Nikkei equilibrium exchange rate calculated by Nikkei and the Japan Center for Economic Research stood at 105.4 yen to the dollar in the third quarter of 2021. Adjusting for shifts in Japan’s current-account balance and terms of trade since then puts the equilibrium rate at 121.7.

Market exchange rates often differ from the theoretical figure, reflecting short-term speculative trading and day-to-day conditions. Based on the average deviation between past equilibrium and market rates, the yen still has room to soften to about 130 against the dollar.

What is more, there remains a risk that Japan’s worsening current-account balance and terms of trade could bring on more yen selling in a vicious cycle.

Importers selling yen for dollar funds is “a root cause of the yen’s accelerating depreciation,” a bank executive tole Nikkei. A weaker currency in turn drives up the cost of imports in yen terms, which can further widen the current-account deficit. Worse terms of trade also make Japanese companies less competitive and add to the downward pressure on the yen.

BOJ governor Kuroda has stressed that the central bank has not changed its basic position that a weak yen is favorable for Japan’s economy and prices. But – as we have said since 2012 when the BOJ launched its latest and greatest monetary debasement experiment – the benefits tend to go mainly to a few exporters and affluent individuals with overseas assets. The vast majority of people and smaller businesses are likely to feel the pinch, and a yen-depreciation spiral would aggravate the pain.

Recent Japanese economic policy – particularly the catastrophic Abenomics policy of the now former prime minister – has centered on boosting corporate profits via a weak yen and waiting for the benefits to trickle down to households. But this approach has been a disaster in bringing meaningful wage growth, just as we said it would be.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida seeks to tackle rising prices with measures including extending fuel subsidies, an approach criticized by some analysts.

“It’s just treating the symptoms,” said Tohru Sasaki, head of Japan market research at JPMorgan Chase Bank in Tokyo. “Simple fiscal expansion while the BOJ continues to buy government bonds could bring on more depreciation.”

In a recent note published by SocGen’s resident skeptic Albert Edwards and titled “Something huge is happening in FX world, and it’s not the dollar” (available to pro subs in the usual place), the strategist writes that “despite core CPI inflation surging in the US and the eurozone, Japan remains locked in deflation with core CPI there (excluding fresh food and energy) falling 1.0% yoy” and he observes that “surging commodity prices just do not seem to have the impact in Japan that they do in the west”  (another SocGen strategist, Kit Juckes, thinks he may have found an explanation why with the BoJ publishing a paper this week on the topic of the contrasting Phillips Curves in the US and Japan – link.)

Albert then goes on to note that by capping the 10y JGB at 0.25% the BoJ has committed itself to unlimited intervention – and if yields continue to rise elsewhere, that will likely accelerate QE to pin JGB 10y yields at 0.25% (now 0.23% after rising as high as 0.248%). “The further widening of the yield spread and QE/QT contrast with the US can only weigh heavily on the yen” he notes.

What does this mean in pratical terms? Well, since Japan is the one country where rates are never allowed to normalize – since the country has so much accumulated sovereign debt even a modest rise in rates would lead to an instant debt crisis – at a time when other central banks are tightening more aggressively in a tacit acknowledgement that rising bond yields reflect valid inflation concerns, “the BoJ may perversely be forced to accelerate QE as JGB yields attempt to rise above 0.25%. It’s a strange world” as Edwards puts it.

And this is where the second massive implication of the BoJ relative easing of policy comes in. Extending on this article, Edwards warns that “as the yen declines, the trend becomes a self-perpetuating phenomenon known as the ‘carry trade’ where participants actively borrow in a depreciating yen to fund higher yielding investments abroad. The appetite for such trades increases markedly when – as last week – the yen breaks below key support levels and begins to decline sharply: in short, the fundamentals combine with the technical, leading to an explosive expansion of the carry trade.”

We have seen this before, most notably in the years before the Global Financial Crisis. Typically, the cheap yen funds are invested into similar instruments like higher yielding US Treasuries but as risk appetites mount, this extends into whatever momentum trade is dominant at the time. That may be commodities or it may be equities. Of course, ultimately it ends in tears (as it did in 2008 when it unwound), but as this new carry trade re-emerges, it means that the yen could fall an awfully long way from here – the ramifications of this might surprise investors.

So are we about to see another roll of the dice in Japan embracing (by default) another period of super-loose yen policy, Edwards asks. This effectively would mean that Japan is willing to soak up the west’s runaway inflation via higher import prices in the hope of kickstarting that wage / price spiral that (as we correctly predicted) never materialized in 2013 onwards. Or as the SocGen strategist rhetorically puts it:

Can a surge in Japan’s headline CPI this time around break the entrenched deflationary psychology of Japanese households? We’ll see.

We, for one, doubt it. Japan, as the premier exhibit of the insanity that is MMT, is coming to its inevitably monetary collapse. Which also means that the yen will drop much, much lower. Edwards agrees, and writes that “despite the yen being undervalued and over-sold, it is entirely plausible that it could fall a long way from here as traders get the bit between their teeth. Is Y150/$ possible? It is, because when the yen breaks, it moves sharply (eg in 2013 from 80 to 100, and again in 2015 from 100 to 120).”

But while Japan may be a lost cause, a bigger question emerges: how will Japan’s latest devaluation impact its fellow exporting powerhouse competitors, i.e., China, and as Edwards frames it, “this beggars the question how will China react? Maybe just like they did in August 2015 when the PBoC devalued? Back then persistent yen weakness had dragged down other competing regional currencies and left the renminbi overvalued.”

Wait, yen weakness leading to China devaluation? According to Edwards, that indeed was the sequnece: as he shows in the chart below, the super weak yen of 2013-15, by driving down other competing Asian currencies, ultimately led us to the August 2015 renminbi devaluation.

Fast forward to today when the aggressive relative easing of the BoJ comes at a time when the PBoC also sticks out as a central bank unwilling to join the global tightening posture and instead is shifting towards an easier stance (after all, China has an imploding property sector it must stabilize at any cost).

Edwards concludes that the one thing to watch out for, especially in the current febrile geopolitical environment, is if China once again is ‘forced’ to devalue because of the weak yen. Economists will tell you that cutting interest rates or the reserve requirement ratio (RRR- r/h chart below) is neutralized when you have a strong currency.

Albert’s last word: “watch the renminbi – and watch the BoJ – whose lack of action is just as important as the Fed’s actions.”

More in Albert’s full note available to pro subs in the usual place.

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

The United States is on track to reach more than 1 million illegal alien encounters so far in the fiscal year 2022, the head of the Border Patrol, Raul Ortiz, said on March 29.

“Probably in the next two or three days we’ll get over a million encounters or apprehensions along the southwest border,” Ortiz said at the Border Security Expo in San Antonio, Texas, Fox News reported.

Signaling that the situation at the border is global in nature, Ortiz said that border agents have encountered illegal aliens from 157 different countries.

In February alone, there were 164,973 encounters – up from 101,099 encounters in 2021 and 36,687 in 2020, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) numbers.

The law enforcement agency has also noted a more than 100 percent month-over-month increase in February in two categories of illegal aliens—family units and unaccompanied minors.

February’s numbers mean that there were 838,685 southwest land border encounters since the fiscal year began in October.

March’s numbers have not yet been released but are already expected to surpass February’s, and take the number of encounters for the fiscal year to over 1 million, within just six months of the fiscal year.

Ortiz noted on Tuesday that the Border Patrol is currently understaffed and is facing further challenges due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

A Texas state trooper arrests a U.S. citizen who was transporting three illegal aliens to San Antonio, in Kinney County, Texas, on Oct. 20, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Ortiz’s comments echo those of Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) who issued a similar warning on Sunday as more people try to make their way into the United States in the coming months.

“It’s going to get worse. It’s going to get a lot worse, springtime, summer, more and more come over. The message is coming back that, ‘Hey, we got a new president, come on in, we’re open for business to the traffickers,’” McCaul said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.”

“I predict a million people trying to get into this country by the summertime,” McCaul said.

President Joe Biden has faced criticism from Republicans over his handling of the border crisis, with many believing the situation has worsened due to the administration’s reversal on immigration policies previously put in place by former President Donald Trump.

The Biden administration is currently weighing up whether or not it will end the controversial pandemic-era Title 42 policy implemented by Trump which allowed Border Patrol agents to turn most illegal aliens back to Mexico immediately if they posed a health threat amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Soon after Biden took office in 2021, the United States stopped expelling unaccompanied minors, alleging that it was cruel and inhumane to do so.

In mid-March, the Biden administration announced that it will potentially bring changes to the policy because there is no longer a serious transmission danger of COVID-19 in the United States in relation to illegal immigration.

This, in turn, could see an influx of illegal aliens at the border, a prospect that concerns a number of lawmakers, including Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who have urged Biden not to end the border restrictions policy without first having a “comprehensive plan” in place.

“We write to you to express great concern about the lack of a specific plan from your Administration with respect to potential changes to the Title 42 Public Health authority, which the [DHS] has relied on at the border during the coronavirus pandemic,” the senators wrote in a March 24 letter (pdf) to Biden.

“Given the impacts that changes to Title 42 could have on border communities, border security, and migrants, we urge your administration not to make any changes to Title 42 implementation until you are completely ready to execute and coordinate a comprehensive plan that ensures a secure, orderly, and humane process at the border,” they said.

Biden on March 21 told reporters at the White House that “a lot more” could be done to address the increasing number of illegal aliens crossing the border into the United States.

“We are in the process of doing it now, including making sure we reestablish what existed before—which is they can stay in place and make their case from their home countries,” he said.

Something strange is going on with the Hunter Biden laptop story.

As regular ZeroHedge readers know, the New York Post was excommunicated from social media shortly before the 2020 US election by Big Tech for reporting on shady international business dealings by the Biden family – particularly in Ukraine and China, contained within a trove of emails, text messages, photographs and financial documents that were on a laptop Hunter abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019.

To refresh your memory:

• Hunter Biden Ex-Biz Associate Was Livid Over $5MM Side-Deal With Chinese: Texts

• Why Is The FBI’s Top Child Porn Lawyer Involved In Hunter Biden Laptop Case?

• Hunter Biden Laptop Linked To FBI Money Laundering Investigation

• Hunter Biden Witness Moved From Prison Cell After Exposing Influence-Peddling Operation

• Chinese Money Launderer Called James Biden After FBI Arrest, Was Trying To Reach Hunter

• Sperry Exposes The Complete History Of Hunter Biden’s Crony-Connected Jobs

• Latest Cache Of Emails Detail How Hunter Biden Earned Millions In China “For Introductions”

Covering for the Bidens to help him win the 2020 election, people like Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) insisted it was Russian propaganda, and outlets which reported on the laptop were smeared as conspiracy theorists.

“FBI & DOJ concur w/ Ratcliffe that Hunter Biden’s laptop & the emails in question weren’t part of a Russian disinformation campaign.”

Adam Schiff last Friday:

“This whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin.”
pic.twitter.com/1ryEj27KCP

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) October 20, 2020

More than 50 ‘former senior intelligence officials’ signed a pre-election letter proclaiming the laptop story ‘has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.’

The Tide Turns

Two weeks ago, the New York Times confirmed the laptop exists, and is legit – and confirmed several previously reported aspects of the story, including correspondence between Hunter and his business partner Devon Archer, both of whom served on the board Ukrainian energy giant Burisma.

Today, the Washington Post and CNN are piling on – with the post confirming yet-more details of the laptop contents, and CNN running a blistering segment and reporting that the federal investigation into Hunter is ‘heating up.’

The Washington Post, meanwhile, reports on Hunter’s “multimillion-dollar deals with a Chinese energy company.“

What’s going on here?

Whatever the case, Glenn Greenwald isn’t about to let the MSM get away with this U-turn unscathed.

Just fucking amazing: now the WashPost, 10 days after NYT, admits that the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop are genuine and uses them in their reporting.

Yet **not one** corrupt outlet that spread the CIA’s pre-election lie that it was “Russian disinformation” has retracted. pic.twitter.com/K6hGIp3jrN

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 30, 2022

I don’t care that I talk about this a lot. It’s not talked about enough. The CIA, Big Tech and corporate media all conspired in the weeks before the election to spread a clear lie to manipulate the election: that these emails were forged by Russia. Now *they ignore the proof*.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 30, 2022

Permit me to ask this one question about the US media:

Other than that they genuinely see their role as lying for noble ends, what could possibly justify their refusal to retract their CIA lie that the Biden archive was “Russian disinformation” or at least acknowledge the proof?

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 30, 2022

 

Authored by Kenny Stancil via Common Dreams, 

More than a dozen progressive organizations sent a letter to US President Joe Biden on Tuesday, urging his administration to do everything in its power to bring about a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine and to avoid doing anything that would cause a further escalation, which they warned might lead to a direct military clash between NATO and Russia, both flush with nuclear weapons.

“Even as we rally the world to oppose Russia’s outrageous and illegal invasion of Ukraine, and provide needed assistance to help the Ukrainian people, it is not too early to lay the groundwork for US contributions to a negotiated peace,” wrote the coalition, which includes Just Foreign Policy, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and Veterans for Peace.

“We understand that the government of Ukraine must play the leading role in any such negotiations, and that the success of negotiations depends on Russian willingness to accept meaningful sovereignty for the people of Ukraine,” the coalition continued. “Yet the United States will also play a critical role in the success of any negotiated peace.”

The U.S., for instance, “controls the sanctions currently devastating the Russian economy,” the letter states. “Tying the easing of some of these sanctions to the success of diplomacy would provide an important incentive for Russian concessions.”

“In addition, any negotiated settlement will involve establishing future Ukrainian and European security arrangements in which the United States will play a key role,” says the letter. “There are actions the U.S. can take in these areas, and assurances the U.S. can give, which no other party anywhere in the world can match. While Ukraine and Russia are the main parties to any negotiation, both will certainly look to the U.S. to agree to and commit to support any new security arrangements resulting from diplomacy.”

While “it does not appear that a peace deal fully acceptable to the Ukrainian government is yet on the table,” the coalition noted, “the devastating human, military, and economic costs of war are pushing the Russian government to become more realistic in their negotiating demands.”

Significant progress appeared to be made Tuesday as Russian and Ukrainian diplomats met in Istanbul.

Moscow announced that it will “fundamentally cut back” offensive operations near Kyiv and Chernihiv in order to increase “trust” during future discussions, though its delegation emphasized that it was not agreeing to a ceasefire. Kyiv, meanwhile, offered to remain neutral in exchange for security guarantees and proposed a 15-year timeline to resolve the dispute over Crimea through “bilateral negotiations.”

“Compromise is difficult given Russia’s actions, but compromise is necessary to diplomacy and will save lives,” the letter adds. “We believe that the potential emerging outlines of an agreement, involving neutrality for Ukraine, security guarantees, and a settlement of issues involving Crimea and the Donbas, could be compatible with meaningful Ukrainian sovereignty and continued cultural and economic openness to the West.”

Just days after Biden’s bellicose denunciation of Russian President Vladimir Putin sparked fears that the U.S. might seek to oust the Kremlin’s leader, the coalition pointed out several “concrete ways” the president can “maximize” support for a diplomatic solution:

• Continue to reject steps which would lead to a direct clash between Russia and the U.S. and NATO militaries, such as a no-fly zone. Escalation between nuclear armed powers is extremely dangerous and will make resolution of the war far more difficult;
• Signal that the U.S. is willing to significantly ease or lift sanctions in exchange for a diplomatic solution acceptable to Ukraine. Toward this end, sanctions should not be placed in statute where they are difficult to ease in response to successful diplomacy;
• Reject maximalist war aims such as regime change in Russia that do not allow for a compromise solution to emerge, and which would involve a multi-year extended war to achieve a total Russian defeat. Such an effort would greatly increase the risk of nuclear escalation, and by extending the war would be even more destructive to Ukraine;
• Be prepared to open direct talks with Russia that complement negotiations conducted by the Ukrainian government and our own continued close coordination with Ukraine;
• Be open to a range of new security arrangements that could emerge from peace talks, including those agreeable to Ukraine that involve sustainable neutrality arrangements while preserving Ukrainian sovereignty; and
• Commit the United States to play a leading role in the economic reconstruction of Ukraine after a settlement—something that other countries, including Russia as the aggressor, should also contribute to.

“If there is no successful diplomatic resolution, the implications for the Ukrainian people and the world are dire,” stressed the coalition.

Biden keeps talking about Putin rejecting diplomacy. Can anyone show me where Biden tried pursuing diplomacy with Putin? I would love to see it.

— Jason Bader (@Grimphilo) March 3, 2022

“You have, correctly in our view, rejected a direct U.S. military defense of Ukraine using American troops or planes,” the groups told Biden. “Such a direct clash between the U.S. and Russia would irresponsibly risk massive and potentially nuclear escalation of the war. But without external forces and without a diplomatic settlement, Ukraine is isolated against a much larger opponent and the civilian death toll will only increase as Russia’s assault continues.”

The coalition pointed out that “an extended war in Ukraine would carry enormous costs for the Ukrainian people” as well as “enormous risks to human and environmental well-being around the world,” including the possibility of nuclear catastrophe, severe economic losses, food insecurity, and political instability.

“If we wish to truly support the Ukrainian people,” added the coalition, “we must be willing to support a negotiated settlement.”